This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain.

Cosmic Consciousness by Ali Nomad

XIII MODERN EXAMPLES OF INTELLECTUAL COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: EMERSON; TOLSTOI; BALZAC

page 10 of 10 | page 1 | Cosmic Consciousness - home

Balzac doubtless understood, not as a matter of perception of a truth but as an experience, and this fact, if no other, marks him as one having a very high degree of cosmic consciousness.

Seraphita called herself a "Specialist." When Minna inquired how it was that Seraphitus could read the souls of men, the answer was:

"I have the gift of Specialism. Specialism is an inward sight that can penetrate all things; you will understand its full meaning only through comparison. In the great cities of Europe works are produced by which the human hand seeks to represent the effects of the moral nature as well as those of the physical nature, as well as those of the ideas in marble. The sculptor acts on the stone; he fashions it; he puts a realm of ideas into it. There are statues which the hand of man has endowed with the faculty of representing the whole noble side of humanity, or the evil side of it; most men see in such marbles a human figure and nothing more; a few older men, a little higher in the scale of being, perceive a fraction of the thoughts expressed in the statue; but the Initiates in the secrets of art are of the same intellect as the sculptor; they see in his work the whole universe of thought. Such persons are in themselves the principles of art; they bear within them a mirror which reflects nature in her slightest manifestations. Well, so it is with me; I have within me a mirror before which the moral nature, with its causes and its effects, appears and is reflected. Entering thus into the consciousness of others I am able to divine both the future and the past * * * though what I have said does not define the gift of Specialism, for to conceive the nature of that gift we must possess it."

This describes in terms similar to those employed by others who possess cosmic consciousness, the results of this inner light, which Seraphita calls a "mirror."

And yet, with this seemingly exhaustive and lucid exposition of the effects of Illumination, Seraphita declares that "to conceive the nature of this gift we must possess it."

Balzac further comments upon what he terms this gift of Specialism, which is cosmic consciousness or illumination, thus:

"The specialist is necessarily the loftiest expression of man--the link which connects the visible to the superior worlds. He acts, he sees, he feels through his _inner being_. The abstractive _thinks_. The instinctive simply _acts_. Hence three degrees for man. As an instinctive he is below the level; as an abstractive he attains it; as a specialist he rises above it. Specialism opens to man his true career; the Infinite dawns upon him--he catches a glimpse of his destiny."

The merely sense-conscious man is the man-animal; the abstractive man is the average man and woman in the world to-day--the human who is evolving out of the mental into the spiritual consciousness. The specialist is the cosmic conscious one, the one who "catches a glimpse of his destiny."

Balzac, in company with all who attain cosmic consciousness, had a great capacity for suffering; and this soul-loneliness became crystalized into spiritual wisdom, which he expressed in the words and in the manner most likely to be accepted by the world.

How else can that divine union to which we are heirs and for which we are either blindly, consciously, or supra-consciously, striving, be described and exploited without danger of defilement and degeneracy, save and except by the phrase "unity with God"?

All mystics have found it necessary to veil the "secret of secrets," lest the unworthy (because _unready_) defile it with his gaze, even as the sinful devotee prostrates himself hiding his face, while the priest raises the chalice containing the holy eucharist in the ceremony of the mass.